I so, so wanted to love this book. From the get go, it seemed to be something right up my alley. I mean, queer lovecraftian romance? I *live* for that kind of thing! And I did find plenty to enjoy about the story, but unfortunately, there was one thing that stopped me from getting properly immersed. Ironically, it’s something that could have been a really strong point in a different book: the author’s voice. The prose is sometimes just a bit too flowery, but overall vivid and engrossing and really beautiful. The problem is, the story is told in two alternating POVs, two women of different backgrounds, personalities, and mindsets. Both POVs are kind of a mixture of first and second person—they’re talking/writing to each other, as this is an epistolary novel. Both clearly intend to pull the reader into depictions of intimate, private experience.

And both of them are identical. Lavinia and Asenath talk in the exact same flowery, convoluted, metaphor-filled style, and there were multiple points throughout the short novel that had me double-checking whose chapter I’m currently reading. And when both POVs are written in the exact same voice, it’s hard not to be aware of the fact that this is actually the *author* talking, not the characters.

So, yeah, despite the prose’s objective beauty, it really messed with my perception of the book and stood in the way of letting me properly enjoy it 😥Which is a shame, because again, the concept of this book is exactly what I want to see more of in fiction, and there were so many amazing descriptions that really set the mood, and the twists on the mythos were perfect and powerful, and the way the narrative touched on perception of disability was so thoughtful, and Lavinia’s whole arc with struggling to reconcile her love for her children and her trauma from everything around their conception and birth left me with a lump in my throat. It could absolutely be a perfect horror romance, if only there were two distinct characters in it.